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Posts from the ‘Scholarly Communication’ Category

Oct 21

Good News Roundup

There is way too much stuff going on in my life and work these days. Most of it is really good stuff, but it is hard to keep up. Before moving on to new reporting, here are some good news highlights from recent weeks.

Colleagues and I shepherded into print the 50th volume (=golden anniversary) of the Journal of Folklore Research, for which I serve as Interim Editor. JFR 50(1-3), a triple issue (!), is a special one titled Ethnopoetics, Narrative Inequality, and Voice: The Legacy of Dell Hymes and is guest edited by Paul V. Kroskrity (UCLA) and Anthony Webster (Texas). The guest editors contributed a post about the issue for the IU Press Journals Blog and the triple issue itself is can be found on the Project Muse and JSTOR digital platforms. Thanks to all who have supported JFR over its first five decades.

The Open Folklore project recently released a new version of the OF portal site. The new site incorporates a range of new features and is built upon the latest version of Drupal. I hope that it is already helping you with your own research efforts. If you have not seen it yet, check it out at http://openfolklore.org/

In September, two scholars whose Ph.D. committees I chaired finished their doctorates. Congratulations to Dr. Flory Gingging and Dr. Gabrielle Berlinger!

I noted the award quickly previously, but I had a great time attending the Indiana Governor’s Arts Awards where Traditional Arts Indiana, led by my friend and colleague Jon Kay, was recognized.

The new issue of Ethnohistory is out and it includes a generous and positive review of Yuchi Indian Histories Before the Removal Era. The reviewer is Marvin T. Smith, author of several key works on the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Native South. Find it (behind a paywall) here: http://ethnohistory.dukejournals.org/content/60/4.toc

A while back, the Mathers Museum of World Cultures opened a fine exhibition curated by IU Folklore graduate student Meredith McGriff. It is Melted Ash: Michiana Wood Fired Pottery and it is a sight to behold. If you have not seen it, stop by the museum and check it out.

Open Access week just kicked off and there are a lot of activities planned for the IUB campus. To get things started my friend and collaborator Jennifer Laherty did an interview with WFHB. It is about 8 minutes long and it can be found on the station’s website: http://wfhb.org/news/open-access-week/

The very talented Bethany Nolan was kind enough to talk to me about Yuchi Folklore and to write about our discussion for her Art at IU blog.

The Euchee (Yuchi) Tribe of Indians just held its 17th (!!!!) annual Heritage Days festival. A few years ago a Miss Yuchi/Euchee was added to the festivities and the young women chosen have been great representatives of their nation. This year another awesome young woman was selected. Congratulations to A.S. on being selected for this big honor and big responsibility.

Sep 1

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Yuchi Folklore: Cultural Expression in a Southeastern Native American Community

A quick note to report that Yuchi Folklore: Cultural Expression in Southeastern Native American Community is now in print and available from the University of Oklahoma Press (its publisher), Amazon.com, and other booksellers. Any royalties that the book might generate will be forwarded directly from the publisher to the Euchee (Yuchi) Tribe of Indians for its use in its cultural and historical preservation efforts. (So anyone who purchases the book is helping a not-for-profit university press with special interest in the peoples and histories of Oklahoma, and (if the book can first cover its production costs), also contributing in a small way to the cultural work of the Euchee people.)

Cover of Yuchi Folklore

Two of the book’s chapters were co-authored with Mary S. Linn, whom I want to thank for joining me in the effort. We both have benefited tremendously from the kindness and support of numerous Euchee (Yuchi) individuals and their help is hopefully meaningfully represented in the volume. None of our Euchee friends are responsible, of course, for the book’s shortcomings.

Chairman Andrew Skeeter (Euchee [Yuchi] Tribe of Indians) and Daniel Swan (Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History) provided generous blurbs appearing on the book’s back cover and two smart reviewers for the press provided great feedback which, I hope, was meaningfully put to use in my revision of the book. Thanks to them all as well.

The University of Oklahoma Press was a joy to work with and I very much appreciate its great efforts on my behalf.

Rather than summarize the book here, feel encouraged to check out its page at the University of Oklahoma Press.

Aug 2

Its Like Woodie Guthrie’s Grand Coulee Dam, Only Its a Green #OA Policy for the UC System

“But now the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam’s fair land…”

Someone needs to write a song in the style of Woodie Guthrie’s tunes celebrating the impressiveness and impact of the Grand Coulee Dam (I am not big on damming rivers, btw) about the new Green open access policy of the University of California system. Congratulations to the UC faculty on this monumental and impactful accomplishment. Thanks especially to Chris Kelty for his adept leadership. It is hard enough organizing an OA mandate effort on a single research university campus, but doing all of a unique system like the University of California is simply astounding.

Here is the announcement:

University of California Faculty Senate Passes Open Access Policy
http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/

Contact:
Professor Christopher Kelty, UCLA
ckelty@ucla.edu

Professor Richard Schneider, UC San Francisco
rich.schneider@ucsf.edu

Professor Robert Powell, Chair, Academic Council
Robert.powell@ucop.edu

The Academic Senate of the University of California has passed an Open Access Policy, ensuring that future research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of UC will be made available to the public at no charge. “The Academic Council’s adoption of this policy on July 24, 2013, came after a six-year process culminating in two years of formal review and revision,” said Robert Powell, chair of the Academic Council. “Council’s intent is to make these articles widely—and freely— available in order to advance research everywhere.”  Articles will be available to the public without charge via eScholarship (UC’s open access repository) in tandem with their publication in scholarly journals.  Open access benefits researchers, educational institutions, businesses, research funders and the public by accelerating the pace of research, discovery and innovation and contributing to the mission of advancing knowledge and encouraging new ideas and services.

Chris Kelty, Associate Professor of Information Studies, UCLA, and chair of the UC University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC), explains, “This policy will cover more faculty and more research than ever before, and it sends a powerful message that faculty want open access and they want it on terms that benefit the public and the future of research.”

The policy covers more than 8,000 UC faculty at all 10 campuses of the University of California, and as many as 40,000 publications a year.  It follows more than 175 other universities who have adopted similar so-called “green” open access policies.  By granting a license to the University of California prior to any contractual arrangement with publishers, faculty members can now make their research widely and publicly available, re-use it for various purposes, or modify it for future research publications.  Previously, publishers had sole control of the distribution of these articles.  All research publications covered by the policy will continue to be subjected to rigorous peer review; they will still appear in the most prestigious journals across all fields; and they will continue to meet UC’s standards of high quality.  Learn more about the policy and its implementation here: http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/openaccesspolicy/

UC is the largest public research university in the world and its faculty members receive roughly 8% of all research funding in the U.S.  With this policy UC Faculty make a commitment to the public accessibility of research, especially, but not only, research paid for with public funding by the people of California and the United States.  This initiative is in line with the recently announced White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directive requiring “each Federal Agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to results of the research funded by the Federal Government.” The new UC Policy also follows a similar policy passed in 2012 by the Academic Senate at the University of California, San Francisco, which is a health sciences campus.

“The UC Systemwide adoption of an Open Access (OA) Policy represents a major leap forward for the global OA movement and a well-deserved return to taxpayers who will now finally be able to see first-hand the published byproducts of their deeply appreciated investments in research” said Richard A. Schneider, Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and chair of the Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication at UCSF.   “The ten UC campuses generate around 2-3% of all the peer-reviewed articles published in the world every year, and this policy will make many of those articles freely  available to anyone who is interested anywhere, whether they are colleagues, students, or members of the general public”

The adoption of this policy across the UC system also signals to scholarly publishers that open access, in terms defined by faculty and not by publishers, must be part of any future scholarly publishing system.  The faculty remains committed to working with publishers to transform the publishing landscape in ways that are sustainable and beneficial to both the University and the public.

Jul 31

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The MMWC Newsletter and Other Infrastructure: Building our Bazaar

mmwc1_Page_1

The Mathers Museum of World Cultures (MMWC) has a new newsletter. The cover for MMWC #1 is shown above. Clicking on it should take you to the whole issue as it appears on the online publishing platform Issuu. To add the newsletter to your hoard of PDFs, you can download it from the MMWC website download it here. For the long haul, we will soon add the newsletter to the museum’s “community” in the IUScholarWorks Repository.

Before talking about the newsletter as infrastructure, I want to thank MMWC Assistant Director Judy Kirk for her great work getting it edited and launched. This is a small summer issue that recaps some recent MMWC developments. A forward-looking fall issue will follow it very soon. While thanking Judy, I want to also thank the whole MMWC community–staff, volunteers, students, researchers, advisory board members, donors–for the work that we begin reporting in this first issue of the newsletter.

One of the museum’s accomplishments of the first half of 2013 was the establishment of an ambitious strategic plan. One thread running through that plan is work aimed at putting into place a range of kinds of museum “infrastructure.” Some of this will be very visible to the museum’s friends and supporters, other kinds of infrastructure will help the museum do its behind-the-scenes work more effectively. As I can, I will try to tell the story of our infrastructure work here. I have found the public reporting of my colleagues and of peer-institutions extremely helpful and my aim here is to reciprocate in appreciation for what I have learned from them. (For a recent example, consider this great account of the building of a teaching lab at the Penn Museum.) Read more

Jul 20

Excellent Symposium Concludes 2013 Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

Many things have been happening lately–so many that keeping up with them here has been difficult. Many good things have gone unreported and some bad current events (global and national, not personal) have gone un-commented upon. I am pleased though to celebrate the conclusion of the 2013 Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology. I was invited to join the institute for its last week and a half and to participate in its concluding symposium at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) on the Mall in Washington. In the symposium, SIMA’s twelve graduate student participants presented the initial findings of their four-week research projects utilizing the (amazing) collections–both objects and archival materials–of the NMNH Department of Anthropology. The students came to SIMA from many different graduate programs and backgrounds and possessed a diversity of historical, ethnographic, topical, and theoretical interests. They did wonderful work and I learned a lot from their studies and from their careful and compelling reporting. While they have further to go, of course, with their projects, I think that it is pretty exciting to hear the results of four intensive weeks of research as the concluding act of that same four week process. Quite remarkable.

I am very appreciative of my continued association with this wonderful program. I am glad that I have been able to help it continue moving along so well.

SIMA will happen again next summer. Details will be posted here on the SIMA website in the months ahead.

Jun 6

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#Altmetrics Coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education includes extensive coverage of the topic of altmetrics by Jennifer Howard. There are two companion stories, but the main one is “Rise of ‘Altmetrics’ Revives Questions About How to Measure Impact of Research.” If you can get access to the Chronicle, this main story can be found here. I spoke to Ms. Howard during her research and was quoted in the story. My discussions with her drew upon the collaborative work of the Faculty Advisory Board for the Office of Scholarly Publishing (at Indiana University) as well as my participation in campus events focused on the reassessment of tenure and promotion guidelines. As might be suggested from the quotations that she shared, our discussions sat on the border between the altmetrics discussion and a neighboring conversation–what is increasingly being discussed as the “what counts?” issue. The later theme concerns questions of genre in scholarly communication under significantly changing circumstances. My hope is that Ms. Howard will have a chance to return to the later theme in future work. She is a fine communicator and a great observer of academic publishing, technology, the digital humanities and neighboring realms. If you can access it, please check out her stories. They are a helpful introduction to the places where we are now.

May 17

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Last but Not Least: Hacking the Academy–the Print and Ebook Editions

I am pleased to note that the University of Michigan Press has now published the print and ebook editions of Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities. This volume was organized and edited by Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt and is part of the press’ Digital Humanities series.

Followers of the project will know that this is just the latest iteration of a multimodal effort. The history of the project is narrated in numerous places, including in the preface to the free open web version (made available earlier by the Press’s Digital Culture Books unit). Very instructive is the more primordial version (inclusive of much content not in the book) at http://hackingtheacademy.org/

I was trilled to participate in the project with an abridged version of a blog post that first appeared here (still a best seller after several years). That original post was called “Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five East Steps” and it promotes resisting the increasing enclosure of scholarly publishing by large multinational firms. (In the new book, it appears on pages 13-14.)

Everyone reasonably wonders about the point of a print edition of a “book” born out of twitter links and weblogs posts. Here is how the editors address this point.

Finally, the reader may legitimately ask: Doesn’t the existence of Hacking the Academy as a book undermine its argument? Why put this supposedly firebrand work into a traditional form? The answer is that we wanted this project to have maximal impact and especially to reach those for whom RSS and Twitter are alien creatures. Moreover, one of the main themes of this volume—and of digital technology—is that scholarly and educational content can exist in multiple forms for multiple audiences.

A review of the book edition, but someone new to the effort (who missed the earlier instances), has been published on the Education Technology and Change (ETC) blog.

Thanks to all of the editors, contributors, readers, and publishers involved in this experimental work.

Apr 14

Some Museum Anthropology Review Stats for 2012

Readers of Museum Anthropology Review might be interested in knowing which contributions to the journal were most intensively consulted during 2012. Only today did I study the statistics closely. Here is the journal’s top five for 2012.

1. Daniel C. Swan’s “Objects of Purpose—Objects of Prayer: Peyote Boxes of the Native American Church” in MAR 4(2).

2. Jon Kay’s “A Picture of an Old Country Store: The Construction of Folklore in Everyday Life” in MAR 4(2).

3. Heather Horst’s Review of “Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children and Consumer Culture (Pugh)” in MAR 4(2).

4. Carrie Hertz’s “Costuming Potential: Accommodating Unworn Clothes” in MAR 5(1-2).

5. Jill Ahlberg Yohe’s “Situated Flow: A Few Thoughts on Reweaving Meaning in the Navajo Spirit Pathway” in MAR 6(1).

Congratulations to these authors and thanks to MAR’s many readers around the world!

[Cross-posted from the Museum Anthropology Review announcements page.]

Apr 8

Its the Day of Digital Humanities 2013!

The Day of DH (Digital Humanities) has just begun (4-8-2013). I am hoping to participate as my schedule allows and I look forward to learning from other project participants. Learn more about the project here: http://dayofdh2013.matrix.msu.edu/

My Day of DH Blog is located here: http://dayofdh2013.matrix.msu.edu/jasonbairdjackson/

Apr 3

Review: A Companion to Folklore

Today the Journal of Folklore Research Reviews (JFRR) published my review of A Companion to Folklore edited by Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). It was an honor to be asked to review such a key volume in the field. Find the  review online here: http://indiana.edu/~jofr/review.php?id=1416

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